I was intrigued by the premise of Secret Level from the very first trailer they ran. Telling stories where they use the video games as inspiration feels like a great concept overall. While I certainly have played my fair share of video games over the years, I was also hoping this would give me some insight into games that others loved but had slipped by me. Each episode runs between 8 and 20 minutes and runs the gambit of games that have been around forever to ones that are only a couple of years old.
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Episode 1 – Dungeons and Dragons: The Queen’s Cradle
An attack against the Cult of the Dragon ends up becoming a rescue mission instead. The lead character, Solon, was scheduled to be sacrificed by the cult, but even after he’s been freed there are still voices in his head which torment him. It’s up to our adventuring group to get him somewhere safe and to someone who might be able to help him end his curse. While seemingly a somewhat straightforward adventure at the start, things grow more and more complex for our adventurers as the truth about Solon’s curse becomes apparent in the climax.
As an avid D&D player for over 35 years at this point, this was a perfect game to start the season. I dug how we could tell exactly what everyone’s class was (even if I’m not always a fan of being so overt about things). I wasn’t sure where the story was going, but I was pleasantly surprised by the ending.
Episode 2 – Sifu: It Take’s a Life
Being completely unfamilar with this game (a common theme with these episodes), it immediately grabbed me when the main character died, resurrected, and continued the fight. It reminded me of Edge of Tomorrow (which is a Groundhog Day style movie using video games as inspiration) with a unique take on things. Every time the protagonist dies they are resurrected but are older. From a video game point of view, it sounds like it creates a nice push/pull where you get more abilities with each death, but you also get less health.
(I could actually see a story about “gaming” the system as best you can. Some kind of pact where two characters keep killing each other to ensure they are complete badasses without taking the lesser health aspect into true consideration).
The actual story is fairly thin, with most of it following a video game logic of beating up on the mooks, running against larger gangs, before finally encountering the level-ending (game-ending?) boss. Still, I enjoyed the concept overall (I’m definitely a sucker for these types of stories).
Episode 3 – New World: The Once and Future King
Another game I didn’t know. After a conquering King crashes on the island of Aeternum, he finds that everyone there is immortal. This does very little to curb his conquering sensibilities such that the majority of the episode is mostly played as comedy with his constant deaths never seem to dissuade him from his true path.
While I figured out where we were going fairly quickly, the story was well done and the ending felt earned.
Episode 4 – Unreal Tournament: Xan
While I’ve never played Unreal, I am certainly familiar enough with the idea of death match first person shooters. What worked well about this episode was we got a lot of information, both directly and indirectly, about the overall story and world. Which is a great idea since, at their core, most first person shooters feel very similar, just with the setting being changed. Focusing on a mining robot who manages to gain sentience also manages to give effectively “faceless” cannon fodder a transformation into someone/something we can root for. This is reflected within the story itself where the crowd echoes the viewer at home.
A successful story that showed there was more to the story.
Episode Five – Warhammer 40,000: And They Shall Know Fear
Of the first batch of episodes, Warhammer 40,000 has the worst story. It literally is little more than a group of Space Marines fighting and killing everything in their path until the reach the big bad and fight it too. However, it is also the one I would say to never skip, because it features some of the best animation of any of the episodes. There is a sequence where the Marines are in the dark and are fighting against creatures whose very blood is bioluminescent which creates some amazing visuals for the animators to play with.
100% check this one out.
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I’ll end it there. They released the last 7 episodes yesterday, so I need to block out some more time to watch them (and I still have 3 from the first batch to talk about as well).
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John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.
He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!
Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.
His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.
He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com
